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SCSS schools AYP report grim

• Twelve Dougherty County schools did not make Adequate Yearly Progress for the 2007-2008 school year.

Joshua Brown

ALBANY — Nearly half of Dougherty County’s 26 schools did not make Adequate Yearly Progress for the 2007-2008 school year, school system officials said Friday.

DCSS Testing Coordinator Renee Bridges said, however, that she anticipates four of the 12 schools will have made AYP for the year after appeals are heard.

“Three of the five elementary schools I feel very confident will make AYP and one of the middle schools,” Bridges said, though she declined to name the schools because it was only a prediction.

If schools do not make AYP for two consecutive years, they are placed on the Needs Improvement list and must offer students the opportunity to receive supplemental instruction or change to another school in the system. Likewise, a school on the Needs Improvement list can only be removed after it makes AYP for two consecutive years.

Schools that did not make AYP are Albany High, Dougherty Comprehensive High, Monroe High, Westover High, Albany Middle, Dougherty Middle, Radium Springs Middle, Lamar Reese Elementary, Live Oak Elementary, Morningside Elementary, Sylvester Road Elementary and Turner Elementary.

On the Needs Improvement list are Albany High, Dougherty High, Monroe High, Radium Springs Middle and Merry Acres Middle. Even though Merry Acres made AYP, it will have to do so one more year to be removed from the NI list.

“We definitely have to look at the data, have to make sure we’re looking at specific areas of need — do we need to go back and review the curriculum?” Bridges said.

While the school system had 12 schools that did not make AYP for the most recent school year, it did have 10 schools that have made AYP for at least six consecutive years.

Schools that must offer alternate school choices are Albany High, Dougherty High, Monroe High and Merry Acres Middle. Radium Springs Middle may also offer alternate school choices but may offer just supplemental instruction because it failed to make AYP for a first time.

School system Federal Programs and School Improvement Director Robert Youngblood said typically very few of the system’s students end up taking advantage of the school choice option if their school doesn’t make AYP.

“Well, I think we have to understand that the whole process of AYP is to give schools an idea of what they need to work on, where they need to improve,” Youngblood said.

Part of the problem in meeting AYP, which is true in Merry Acres’ case, is that schools are divided into several subgroups. An AYP failure in any one subgroup causes the school not to meet AYP as a whole, Youngblood said.

“If it’s students with disabilities, you know we need to put more energy, more effort into that subgroup,” he said.

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